Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  He sat on in the dark again, and Neal took his place at the front door, and stood there looking out Not a soul was in the house save himself and his master; and it may have seemed a more cheering way of passing the evening, to Neal, than to be shut up indoors.

  It grew darker. Neal strolled along by the skirting shrubs of the garden, and took his stand at the front gate, ready to exchange courtesies with the people who would soon be going home from church or chapel. The moon did not give much light yet, but the night promised to be as clear and bright as the previous one had been.

  “Holloa!” cried Neal, as a man he knew came up quickly. “You are in a hurry to-night.”

  “I have been out on business, Mr. Neal,” replied the man, who was in fact an assistant to a carpenter and undertaker. “Our work can’t always wait for the Sabbath to go by before it is seen to.”

  “Is anybody dead?” asked Neal.

  “Lady Oswald. The message came down to us best part of an hour ago; so I’ve been up there.”

  It has been observed that Neal was too well trained a gentleman both in manners and nerves to express much surprise, but this answer caused him the very greatest shock. He was so startled as to take refuge in disbelief.

  “Lady Oswald, did you say? But she’s not dead!”

  “But she is,” replied the man. “I ought to know. I’ve just come from her.”

  “Why, what has she died of? They said the railway accident had not materially hurt her.”

  “She haven’t died of the accident. She have died of that — that — what-you-call-it — as is give to folks to take the pain out of ‘em.”

  Neal did not understand. “To take the pain out of them?” he repeated, looking questioningly at the speaker.

  “That stuff that have come into fashion of late years. The doctors will give it you while you have a tooth took out, if you’ll let ‘em.”

  “Do you mean chloroform?”

  “That’s it I never can remember the name. But I’d rather call it poison, for my part — killing folks dead off without a warning.”

  “Who gave it to Lady Oswald?”

  “Your master,” replied the man, lowering his voice to a whisper as he glanced at the windows of the house. “The servants was in the room with me up there, and they told me about it There was something to be done to my lady — some bones to be set, I believe — and the doctors went this afternoon, and they give her this stuff, and it killed her. I wonder Parliament don’t make a law again its use, for ray part.”

  “I am sorry to hear this,” exclaimed Neal. “My lady was very friendly to me.”

  “Ay. The servants be cut up like anything. And enough to make ‘em! It’s a shocking thing. The lady’s maid says she can’t think why they should have give her the stuff, for Mr. Cray himself told her, when he was there in the afternoon, that what they had to do wouldn’t hurt my lady no more than a flea-bite. Any way, she’s dead. But I can’t stop here, I must get along back with the measure. Good-night, Mr. Neal.”

  “Good-night,” replied Neal.

  He leaned on the gate, watching the man hurrying onwards with his fleet steps, and thinking over what he had heard. Perhaps it is not too much to say that Mr. Neal would have preferred to hear of the death of any other person in Hallingham than of Lady Oswald’s. Lady Oswald had been a great friend to him, and it had been Neal’s intention to put her friendliness to the test in a very short period of time. Neal was a subtle schemer, and he had been perfecting a plan by which at one bold stroke Lady Oswald’s mind should be disabused of that suspicion against himself imparted to her by Dr. Davenal the day of Miss Caroline’s marriage, to which he had been an unsuspected listener, and by which he should also be effectually served. Neal had begun to feel that his tenure in his present situation was no longer sure, and he intended by the help of Lady Oswald to secure to himself a situation of a different nature.

  Now this grand scheme was destroyed. As the rising waves dash away the “houses” built by children on the sands at the sea-shore, so this château en Espagne of Neal’s was dashed down by the death of Lady Oswald. If Neal’s cold and selfish heart could like any one, it had liked her. She had kept up friendly relations with Neal, as a former retainer of Sir John and Thorndyke; had shown more consideration to Neal than to her own servants — had treated him in fact as superior to her servants. When Neal waited on her at her residence to pay his respects, as he did occasionally, she would ring the bell on his departure and say sharply, “Show Mr. Neal out” — as much as to remind her household that he had not been a common servant at Thorndyke: he was groom of the chambers. She had also been liberal in her presents to Neal. Altogether, Neal in his discomfiture felt very much as though her ladyship’s death was a grievance personally inflicted on himself.

  Jessy the housemaid was the first of the servants to return. The moment she entered, Neal took his hat and went up to Lady Oswald’s with a view of learning particulars. The news had been so sudden, so unexpected, that some faint feeling or hope almost seemed to be in the man’s mind that he should find it untrue.

  He found it too true. He was allowed to see Lady Oswald, and he listened to the details given by the servants, gathering them into his mind to be turned over and examined afterwards. Parkins spoke with him privately. She was very bitter against the chloroform: she said to him that she should always look upon the administering it as an underhand trick not to be understood. There was no question of chloroform when she was in the room, and that was up to the very last moment; there was no chloroform present that she saw, and the doctors must have got it concealed in their pockets and produced it when her back was turned. She didn’t blame Mr. Cray; she was certain it was not Mr. Cray; for he had told her privately in the afternoon that the operation would be a mere nothing, a flea-bite — and she could only wonder at Dr. Davenal’s not having exercised more caution. One of the servants down stairs had had some experience in chloroform, she added, and her opinion was, that an over-quantity must have been given: that Dr. Davenal had mistook the dose, and given too much. At any rate, if ever there was a murdered woman, it was her mistress.

  Parkins’s eyes were alight when she said this, and Parkins’s cheeks aflame. Her grief for the loss of her mistress was merging into anger at its cause. Like Neal, she was beginning to consider it as a personal grievance inflicted on herself, and to resent it as such. Self-interest sways the best of us more or less: and Parkins felt that through this she had lost a better place than she should ever find again. Neal asked her a few questions on his own score, and hurried away with the information he had garnered.

  He hastened home with the utmost speed that his legs would carry him. He had a reason — at least he thought he might have one in future — for not wishing it known at home that he had paid that visit to Lady Oswald’s. The late returners from church were but in the streets when he went back, slowly pacing along in the lovely autumn night. He whisked in just in time to admit the ladies.

  “Is papa in, Neal?”

  “Yes,” answered Neal, hap-hazard, for he was of course not positive upon the point. “ I fancy he is in his room, Miss Sara.”

  Sara knocked at the consulting-room door and entered. As she went forward, Neal contrived to obtain a passing view of the interior. It was still in darkness, and Dr. Davenal was leaning his back against the window-frame, his arms folded, his head bowed, as one will stand when under the weight of care.

  “It looks just as though he had purposely killed her,” was Neal’s comment to himself.

  Not that Neal thought it then. No, no. But Neal was in a state of terrible vexation and disappointment; in that precise mood when it is a vast relief to vent one’s trouble upon anybody.

  “How sad you look, papa!” cried Sara, as she noted his depressed attitude. “And you are all in the dark!”

  Dr. Davenal aroused himself, put his hand on his daughter, and turned round to face the street. At that moment the death-bell rang out.

  Accustomed now
to the darkness of the room — not that it was entirely dark, for the doctor had thrown open the Venetian blind, and the gas-lamp cast in its rays brightly — Sara could see how sad and clouded was his face. The death-bell was striking out its quick sharp strokes.

  “Do you know who the bell is tolling for, papa? I never heard it ring out so late as this.”

  “I expect it is tolling for Lady Oswald.”

  “Papa! For Lady Oswald?” She quite shrieked as she said it in her startled surprise.

  “She is dead, child,” he said, his subdued voice a contrast to hers.

  “O papa! Was it the operation? Did she die under it?”

  “Yes — in one sense. The operation was successfully accomplished, but — chloroform was exhibited, and she never rallied from it.”

  Sara stood still, her heart beating. It seemed that a hundred regrets were crowding upon her, a hundred questions. “O papa, why did you administer chloroform?” she exclaimed, scarcely knowing what she said.

  For a single moment the temptation came over Dr. Davenal to tell his daughter the truth, and he had unclosed his lips to speak; but he checked himself in time. Sara was trustworthy — he knew that; but it was impossible to answer for chance or inadvertent words, even from her; and for Mark’s sake it might be better to leave her in equal ignorance with the rest of the world.

  “My dear,” he said — and the words to her ear sounded strangely solemn—” I have striven to do the best always for my patients, under God. Had I been able to save Lady Oswald’s life, I would have saved it.”

  “O yes, yes, papa, I know that We all know it. Did she die quite suddenly? Was she sensible of her state?”

  “People who die under the influence of chloroform seldom know anything after inhaling it She did not Sara, it is a painful subject; I would rather not speak of it. I feel it greatly — greatly.” She quitted him and went up stairs to take off her things. When she came down again Dr. Davenal was in the dining-room, and the tray, as was usual when they dined early, was on the table with some slight refreshment “Not anything for me,” said the doctor to his sister. “I cannot eat to-night.”

  He did not sit down: he was pacing the carpet with thoughtful, measured tread. Neal stole a glance at him from under the corner of his eyes.

  “Shall I light the gas in your study, sir, to-night?”

  “No. Yes, you may light one burner,” the doctor added after a moment’s pause.

  “What’s the matter, Richard?” asked Miss Davenal. “You seem cut up. Have you had a hard day’s work to-day?”

  “Pretty well,” called out the doctor.

  “Do you know who it is that’s dead? Very queer that the passing-bell should toll out at night!”

  “You can tell your aunt, Sara,” the doctor quietly said, as he stepped to the door of the room, and vanished.

  “Well, I’m sure!” angrily cried Miss Davenal. “My brother is polite to-night. He might have answered me.”

  Sara pushed from her the piece of cake she had been trying to eat, and went close to her aunt, speaking in her slowest and most distinct tones.

  “Don’t you see that papa has had a great shock — a blow, Aunt Bettina? Lady Oswald is dead.”

  Poor Miss Davenal, never very quick at comprehending, confused the information together in the most helpless manner. “What do you say? Lady Oswald has had a blow? Who’s dead?”

  “Aunt, aunt, you will understand me if you won’t be impatient. Lady Oswald is dead. And I say it is a great blow to papa. I can see that it is.”

  Miss Davenal heard now, and looked perfectly scared. “Lady Oswald dead! It cannot be, Sara.”

  “She had to undergo some operation in consequence of the accident, and papa gave her chloroform, hoping of course to lighten the pain, and she never rallied from it.”

  Miss Davenal seized Sara’s hands in her dismay. Her senses were sharpened and she had heard perfectly; her face had turned white. Neal, who had come in, looked at her as he stood near the door, and wondered whether she was going to faint.

  “Sara, I don’t like that chloroform. I have told the doctor so, often and often. They should never try it upon me. Who gave it her?”

  “Papa,” replied Sara, never dreaming but she was correct in saying so. “Aunt Bettina, he gave it her for the best.”

  “Best! of course he gave it for the best — nobody disputes that. But I don’t like it: I never did like it. Chloroform is come into fashion now — an improvement on the old state of things, they call it, as they call the railways — and I don’t deny that it spares pain; but I do not like it.”

  By and by Sara went to the consulting-room. The doctor was pacing it uneasily.

  “I have come to say good-night, papa.”

  “You are going to bed early, is it ten o’clock?”

  “Yes, I think it is past ten. Good-night, dear papa. I hope you will be better in the morning.”

  “I have felt nothing like it since the death of Richard. Goodnight, my child.”

  It was not so much the death in itself that was affecting Dr. Davenal, as the appalling reflection that it had been, in a manner, wilfully caused. The knowledge weighed on his heart like a stone.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  THE NIGHT VISITOR TO DR. DAVENAL.

  THE bed-chamber of Sara Davenal was over the doctor’s study, on the opposite side of the landing to the drawing-room. It was not a large room, but longer than it was wide, and the bed was placed at the far end of the room — the back. The chamber behind it was larger, and occupied by Miss Davenal. The room opposite Miss Davenal’s, and behind the drawing-room, had been the bed-chamber of Dr. Davenal in his wife’s lifetime; since her death it had been kept as a spare room for chance visitors.

  Sara did not begin to undress immediately upon entering the room. She put out the light, and sat down at the open window to indulge in a little quiet thought: it was rather a habit of hers to do so when the night was fine and she came up early. She liked to sit there and think of many things, to glance up at the clear sky in the bright moonlight. With all her practical good sense — and she had her full portion of it — she was of a somewhat dreamy, imaginative temperament; and since Richard’s death she had grown to think more of that other home to which he was gone, the same to which we are all hastening, than it is perhaps usual for girls of Sara’s age to think of it As she had said to Dr. Davenal in the afternoon, she would wonder whether Richard and her lost mother — whom she but imperfectly remembered — could look down upon her: she was fond of fancying that they were looking down upon her: and she would lose herself in a maze of visionary imaginings.

  Not on this night, however, did her thoughts turn to Richard. They were full of Lady Oswald and her unhappy death. That this fatal chloroform had been administered for the best, in accordance with Dr. Davenal’s experienced judgment, Sara assumed as a matter of course; she never so much as thought of casting a doubt to it: but she knew enough of him to be sure that the fatal termination would cause him to repent of having given it — to blame himself bitterly, and she felt for him to the very depth of her heart An uncomfortable sensation, as if her father had been guilty of some deliberate wrong, was pervading her, and she could not shake it off.

  It should be observed that although Sara sat close to the open window, she was not liable to be seen by the passers-by in the street, did any cast their eyes that way. A small stand or ledge had been constructed round the window (a bay window, as was the one answering to it on the other side, the drawing-room), and this was filled with pots in flower. Geraniums of many species, fuchsias, heliotropes, heaths, wild thyme, the fine flowering cactus, and many others, raised their heads proudly, and formed a screen behind which Sara was securely sheltered from observation, and also from the rays of the gas-lamp at the gate, which otherwise would have lighted her up. So that, although she could see out perfectly well, sitting as she now was, she could not be seen. If she chose to stand at the window and lean out, her head was above the flowers;
but at the same time they entirely prevented her from seeing anything immediately below her window. The ground for a yard or two beyond Dr. Davenal’s study window was as completely hidden from her as though it had been a hundred miles off; and it is necessary to mention this. The bed-room above Sara’s, occupied by Watton the upper maid, had a flat window, and its view underneath was in like manner obstructed by the extending bow and the plants in it of Sara’s. These flowers at Miss Sara Davenal’s window were quite the admiration of the pedestrian portion of Hallingham, and many a one would halt at the front railings to take a passing gaze at them. They were really beautiful, and Sara took a pride in them and liked to tend them.

  She liked to inhale their sweet perfume, as she was doing now, sweeter and stronger in the night air than in the garish day. Perhaps the heliotrope was of all the most powerful scent: and somehow that heliotrope had become associated in her mind with Mr. Oswald Cray. She could not have told why or wherefore; she had never attempted to analyse the cause: she only knew that when she approached that window, and the perfume of the heliotrope was wafted to her senses, the image of Oswald Cray was, in like manner, by some mysterious instinct, wafted to her mind.

  Perhaps it did not require any extraneous aid to bring him to her memory. He was already too securely seated there. For the last twelvemonth, since Oswald Cray had become intimate at their house, her love for him had been gradually growing into being: that subtle understanding, never to be explained or accounted for, which draws together two human hearts, and only those two, the one for the other, of all the whole world, life finding life, had arisen between them. Oswald Cray had never spoken or hinted at his feelings until the time when Dr. Davenal honestly avowed to him that he had fancied he cared for Caroline: that had brought forth the one word — and it was little more — to Sara. But she had known it just as surely as though he had spoken out all along.

  Save for that shrinking reticence which would fain hide the secret, as the modest snowdrop hides its head, and which must always accompany the feeling if it be genuine, there was nothing to be ashamed of in this love. It is true that it had become entwined with every fibre of her heart, was a part and parcel of her very being. It would perhaps have been impossible — at least, it would have been very improbable — for Sara Davenal, with her right feeling, her powers of discernment, which she possessed in a high degree, and her sound good sense, to fall in love with an unworthy man. She could not have met with a more worthy one than Oswald Cray. He had his faults — ay, who has not? — but they were faults of what may be called a high order; not mean, drivelling, scandalising faults, that abound in the world. Each was suited and suitable to the other, in taste, in position, in moral goodness: and their love had been given for aye; beyond the power of circumstances or time to change. They might never be more to each than they were now. Untoward fate might separate them; the world’s bitter tongues, expediency, the poison of misunderstanding; any one of these separating causes might part them; Sara’s unbending principle, Oswald’s wrong-headed pride — it was impossible to foretell: but of one thing both might rest assured, that unto their dying day that love could never be wholly extinguished in either heart, so as to give place to another.